


a ship without an anchor

by adolescentwolf



Series: the hundred [1]
Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Angst, Doctor/Cop, F/M, Happy Ending, protective brother
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-01
Updated: 2015-01-01
Packaged: 2018-03-04 19:43:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,470
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3086228
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/adolescentwolf/pseuds/adolescentwolf
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>How is it that she still manages to look him straight in the eye, rather than up at him? How does she do that earnest thing with her eyes? How does she always smell like this? Clarke is made of questions and Bellamy’s short on answers.</p>
            </blockquote>





	a ship without an anchor

**Author's Note:**

> A few things: Let's just pretend for the purposes of this fic that Bellamy and Clarke are about the same age. I know rookie cops don't just get set loose like that, but again, let's just pretend. Also: I am in love with Bellamy Blake (I'm a sucker for those angry, angsty, asshole-on-the-surface-but-lionhearted-and-vulnerable boys) and I really hope I didn't screw him up in this.
> 
> Enjoy!

i. 

The first time he sees her, she’s covered in blood.

He’s halfway through a blueberry muffin when dispatch crackles in over the radio, and it takes him about half a minute to recognize the code it’s repeating. _All available units,_ says the radio. _Shooting,_ Bellamy hears. He and Atom share a stricken look before Bellamy’s swallowing down half-chewed food and stomping on the gas hard enough that Atom’s head snaps back against the headrest.

They’re green, having barely seen action since getting out of the academy. Atom’s never discharged his weapon, and Bellamy’s already gotten a reputation for being a hothead. He’s still getting used to the fact that he’s a _cop_ now, not one of the scrappy punks on the street. _(“You’ll always be a scrappy punk,”_ Octavia said dismissively the day he graduated. But she’d smiled—that special O smile she keeps like a secret—and added as she touched his lapel, _“You’re just in blue now.”)_

They’re not the first ones on the scene, which is good, because neither of them has ever seen this kind of chaos. It’s groaning bodies and bullet holes in the walls, and Bellamy _knows_ he’s supposed to wait for more backup, but he catches a flash of movement inside the building—a running figure. He ignores Atom’s hiss—“Bell, wait!”—and charges inside after it.

It’s obvious that it isn’t the shooter—he finds it knelt down over a body, hands frantic and moving.

“Lady,” he barks, “what the hell are you doing?”

She jerks, turns to catch the full sight of him, shoulders hunched, weapon drawn, before she turns back to the body. “He’s gone,” she says breathlessly. “The shooter.”

“Which way?”

Bellamy hadn’t realized that Atom followed him in, but here he is, right behind Bellamy’s shoulder. The woman points, hand stained red, and Atom locks eyes with Bellamy before heading off in that direction.

Bellamy should really follow him. That’s what partners do. But he’s distracted by this woman—girl, really—shoving her fingers into an evident wound in the body’s abdomen. Her fucking hand is _inside_ this guy’s chest, this guy that can’t be that much older than Bellamy.

“Hey,” he says. Then, louder, “Hey, stop! An ambulance is on the way.”

She doesn’t stop. “If I stop, he’ll bleed out,” she snaps. He notices, then, the scrubs under her coat, her padded sneakers, the ID badge swinging from her pocket. _Doctor_. She looks at him sharply, and her eyes are _really really blue_. “Why are you just standing there?” she demands.

Her voice jolts him into action, and he goes storming after Atom. He runs faster when he hears the gunshots, three quick pops. Atom’s already down when he hits the alley, and the shooter’s already running, so Bellamy raises his weapon and fires after the shadow. It’s really satisfying to watch him go down.

Bellamy runs to Atom first, but he realizes, with a plummeting heart, that Atom was dead before he hit the ground. He puts the cuffs on the shooter much too tightly, wishes he doesn’t have to pack him into an ambulance.

He catches a glimpse of the interior of the other ambulance—the dark boy is motionless atop it, the blonde girl sitting on his chest with her hands clamped over one of his many wounds, barking orders at EMTs that look more afraid of her than of him dying.

“Dammit, Wells,” she hisses, and then the doors close.

 

He sees her again in the hospital outside a trauma room, coat gone, looking very small with her arms wrapped around herself and her hands stained a rusty red. She sees him, too, gives something that’s supposed to be a smile.

“He’s dead,” she tells him bluntly. Her eyes are puffy. “Wells. Too many bullets.”

He doesn’t ask who Wells is. “Mine, too,” he says. Neither of them says _I’m sorry_. Neither of them wants to hear it. “I’m Bellamy,” he adds after a minute.

“Clarke,” she replies. Then frowns. “Blake?” she asks.

“Yeah,” he says, taken aback. She’s staring at him with an odd expression.

“I know your sister,” Clarke explains dully.

“Bellamy!” _Speaking of…_

He barely has a chance to turn around before he’s got an armful of Octavia, her hair coming out of her ponytail and her small form trembling. Her scrubs are sprayed with microdots of blood—he hopes not Atom’s. He hopes she hadn’t seen. When she pulls back, her eyes are watery. “He’s dead, Bell. Are you okay? They said you shot the—”

“Yeah,” Bellamy interrupts. His hands tighten around her shoulders. Suddenly, Octavia’s ten years old again in braids and ill-fitting clothes, in need of protecting. He crushes her to his chest, thinks maybe he can keep her safe in that hollow space in his heart.

“Clarke,” O says. “Clarke, what…” She wriggles away from Bellamy, who’s not ready to let her go, and hugs Clarke, who very slowly hugs back. “You’re bleeding,” Octavia exclaims, pulling back suddenly.

She’s right. There’s a bloody tear in Clarke’s scrubs, near the shoulder. Clarke hardly seems to hear her, shies away from her touch. “It’s just a graze,” she says. She turns back to the window. “I have to call his dad,” she mutters. Bellamy isn’t sure they’re supposed to hear.

He kisses Octavia’s temple and nods in Clarke’s direction. “Make sure she gets taken care of,” he murmurs. He walks away. He doesn’t really get close to people.

Octavia sleeps in Bellamy’s shitty apartment, where he can keep an eye on her. He doesn’t see her cry—he suspects there’s something in her that refuses to show vulnerability—but there are wet spots on the pillow in the morning. He wishes he could feel her pain for her. He didn’t even really know Atom—didn’t even like him. He won’t feel that Atom-shaped hole in his life like she will. It feels selfish.

 

ii.

The next time he sees her she looks like a ghost. 

It’s Bellamy’s job to keep an eye on the asshole that shot Atom (his name is Murphy or something, but he’s just _the asshole_ in Bellamy’s head). Part of him thinks it’s a conflict of interest, having the dead cop’s partner guard his killer, but he wants to see this through, and the captain of his precinct must have understood that. That means standing by the asshole’s bedside listening to him talk while he rattles his handcuff around the hospital bed loudly, as if he has the right to be pissed that he’s going away for killing a cop.

Bellamy wants to punch him in the face. He’s got a face made for punching.

Clarke comes into the asshole’s room, tired and wan, circles carved under her eyes, to check his chart. Has she gone even gone home? Has she gotten the blood out of her nail beds? Bellamy surprises himself by wanting to ask. The asshole’s complaining, something about wanting Jell-O. Bellamy could get it for him, but he’d have to poison it on principle, so he just stands in his corner like a statue.

Clarke gets too close to the bed, and Murphy’s free hand lashes out to wrap around her wrist. “Hey,” he says, yanking her down, “is there any green Jell-O?” He grins lamely at Clarke’s stricken face. “Come on, sweetheart. I’m wounded.”

“You’re going to want to let go of me,” Clarke says, before Bellamy can. There’s something in her voice, something surprisingly dangerous, and Murphy’s grin falters.

“If you don’t,” says Bellamy dryly, “I’ll let her break your wrist.”

Clarke wants to, he can see it in her face. This is the guy that killed her friend and he would guess she could stab him and sleep like a baby. Murphy sees it, too. He lets go, slumps into his bed. Clarke gives him his medicine. Bellamy admires her restraint.

He follows Clarke outside. “Have you gone home?” he asks.

She jerks, blinks slowly. They’re not friends. He doesn’t even know her. Their only connection—a thin thread between them—is Octavia, who’s at Bellamy’s because he made her take a day off. “I…” Clarke huffs, runs a hand through her limp hair.

“Have you eaten?” Bellamy tries.

A crease appears between Clarke’s fair eyebrows. “No,” she replies honestly.

There’s that feeling in Bellamy’s chest—that warm urge to protect. It’s a warning, but he ignores it. “Come on,” he says. “I know a place.”

It’s a hole-in-the-wall close by, a frequent haunt of Bellamy’s since he was a kid. Octavia had grown up in one of the back booths with coloring books and word searches while Bellamy hustled around pouring waters and balancing food on one hand. It’s a safe place. “The best Chinese food you’ll ever eat,” he tells Clarke as he herds her inside.

He’s sure she would agree if she would eat. He orders her soup—simple stuff, broth and noodles—and Mrs. Phan gets him his usual automatically, thankfully without pinching his cheek like she used to, but with a winking glance cast towards Clarke. Can’t she see the girl’s a wreck?

“I wasn’t supposed to outlive him,” Clarke says.

Bellamy is unable to answer, mouth full of sweet and sour chicken. Was Wells her boyfriend? He doesn’t ask.

“We always said it’d be me who died first,” she adds. She’s picking at her own fingernails—been biting them, too, it looks like. O used to do that. “I’d get trampled at a concert or something stupid like that. Wells was supposed to die in his sleep like that old woman in _Titanic_.”

“I always thought I’d get shot before Atom,” Bellamy tells her honestly. _Before anyone else._ “I’m stupid enough to taunt someone with a gun.”

That makes a corner of her mouth turn up in a ghost of a smile. “I don’t know about that,” she says.

What has O told her? “Not everything goes according to plan,” he says gently. He nods at her food. “Eat something, princess. I know it’s not high-brow, but…” He shrugs.

She gives him a dirty look—much livelier than her mourning one. She picks up her spoon and digs in.

It’s not much, but it’s a start.

 

iii.

“Blake? _Bellamy_ Blake? Where?”

His head is really hurting too much to deal with the sight of Clarke marching up to him with his chart in her hand like it’s a weapon.

“What did you do?” she demands, and he groans.

“Nothing,” he insists. _Nothing_ involves irritating a perp enough to find himself acquainting his head with the sidewalk, _hard_.

“Does Octavia know you’re here?”

Bellamy scowls at her. The last thing he wants is for someone to remind Octavia that his job is dangerous, that if he’s not careful she’ll lose another person in her empty life. She doesn’t need that. “If you tell her,” he says, “I will kill you.” Clarke doesn’t seem intimidated, so he sighs. “It’s really nothing,” he tells her. “The other guy said it’s just a concussion. Give me my meds and I’m out of here.” He hopes it’s evident how much he needs to knock out.

She eyes him warily. “Someone should wake you up every few hours,” she says.

“I know how to treat a concussion.”

“Clearly you’ve had one before,” she says wryly, and Bellamy really, at this moment, hates her. She sighs, too. “You really don’t want Octavia to know?”

“She has enough to worry about,” Bellamy says curtly.

Clarke studies his face with something different in her expression, something more understanding. He doesn’t know what she sees in him. “Okay,” she says finally. “I’ll let you off on this one, but _only_ if you agree to stay here overnight.”

“You’re going to give a precious bed to a concussion?” Bellamy wants to go to sleep. He wants Clarke to shut up and let him sleep. Forever, maybe.

Clarke shakes her head. “I’ll sneak you into an on-call room,” she says.

It’s his turn to eye her. Finally, he drops his head back and groans, “Fine. _Fine_ , but just—don’t tell O.”

Clarke doesn’t say anything. She gives him his meds. She doesn’t let him walk, but wheels him instead. The on-call room she brings him to is tiny, one bunk bed and a chair, but it’s quiet and dark, and Clarke lets him collapse onto the bottom bunk without comment.

He dreams he’s twelve again, scared and alone while Octavia burns hotter and hotter in her tiny bed. He dreams of the panic, of the helplessness. He dreams O catches fire and turns to ash.

_“Bellamy.”_

His eyes shoot open. There’s hair hanging in front of his face, smelling strongly of shampoo. Clarke smiles apologetically, her teeth glinting in the dark. Her hand is cool when it touches his forehead, slides down to press against his neck. It feels nice.

She makes him sit up and drink water, keeps him awake by prattling about her shift. This old woman with heart disease keeps giving her hard candy, this kid with stomach issues puked on her again, and this girl on the third floor got her hand reattached and Clarke got to _watch_ …

He’s dozing off again when she says, “Octavia’s lucky.”

It seems like a stupid statement. Does Clarke know about their childhood? What has Octavia told her? He doesn’t say anything. Would now be a bad time to throw up?

“To have someone like you, I mean,” Clarke adds. Does she think Bellamy won’t remember this later? Maybe he won’t. He doesn’t remember half of what happened after he got his first concussion (note to self: _never_ try to do a flip off of a tree branch again, even if it’s to make O laugh). Also, Clarke’s mentioned that this is the third time she’s woken him up, and he doesn’t even remember the first two.

“I wish I had someone like you,” he thinks he hears her say, but he’s slipping away again, and he wouldn’t know what to say to that, anyway.

 

iv.

Clarke becomes a frequent figure in Bellamy’s life.

She and Octavia are friends now, or something, so whenever Bellamy sees O, Clarke’s almost guaranteed to be around. He supposes it’s good for his little sister; Clarke’s steady and reasonable where Octavia’s wild and impulsive, and he can’t be there all the time. But there’s something about Clarke—sober Clarke, not-sad Clarke—that sets Bellamy on edge; something in the curve of her mouth, the upturn of her nose, in the steel of her spine. Something that rubs him the wrong way.

Maybe it’s because she represents everything that Bellamy’s grown up hating, the stiff composure and condescending tone, the hallmark of wealth and private school. Not that she’s insufferable, she’s just… He doesn’t know how to finish that sentence.

Suddenly she’s pervading the parts of Bellamy’s life he kept to himself. Octavia introduces her to The Ark, a favorite bar of his downtown (and honestly it’s a little scary that Octavia can get into bars, but he never ceases to be amazed at his sister’s abilities) and he can’t even drink a beer without Clarke and her loud, _loud_ laugh.

The buzzing of his phone is a mini sun in the darkness of his bedroom. He squints at the screen.

(2:31 AM) O: come 2 the ark

(2:32 AM) O: TEQUILA!!!!!!

He hurries down. When he gets there, he finds Octavia and Clarke holed up in a booth laughing, indeed with a bottle of tequila. “Bell!” Octavia cries when she sees him. “Come and play!”

 _She’s drunk,_ he thinks. _She’s drunk or she wouldn’t be laughing_. When O gets hurt, she hurts for a long time. She doesn’t laugh, she curls in on herself. Clarke’s drunk, too. He sees it in her flushed cheeks and shining eyes. He feels a little betrayed. He thought they had an agreement, even a silent one.

“You’re underage,” he says accusingly.

Octavia rolls her eyes. “Raven doesn’t care,” she says, waving a hand towards the pretty bartender. “He’s such a party pooper,” she tells Clarke. She must be really drunk. Sober Octavia would never say _party pooper_. She turns back to him. “The game is,” she says, more solemnly, “you tell a story about someone who’s dead, and if it makes anyone else sad, you have to do a shot.” She does one as if to prove her point.

Bellamy feels a prick of fear in his stomach. “O, come on,” he says. “It’s time to go home.” He reaches for the bottle, but Octavia jerks it away.

“No,” she says stubbornly. “I’m having fun.” She looks between them. “I’m having _fun_ ,” she repeats, and then bursts into tears.

Clarke has the decency to look guilty when Bellamy sighs and slides into the booth so he can fold Octavia in a hug. On some level, Bellamy kind of gets how startling it is to see O cry. She’s made of steel, but inside she’s just a girl, a fragile person like the rest of them. “It’s time to go home,” Bellamy says. He pulls Octavia out of the booth, flicks a look down at Clarke when she doesn’t move to follow. “You, too,” he says.

Raven shoots him an apologetic look as they leave, but he doesn’t have time for that.

He doesn’t know where Clarke lives, and he figures it’d be easier to just take them both back to his apartment. He herds them into the backseat, where the girls fall asleep against each other. He packs a knocked-out Octavia into his bed again, comes out to find Clarke standing unsteadily in his tiny living room.

“I’m sorry,” she blurts, and it’s a little scary how the girl who stuck her hand inside of a person’s chest is the same person who gets pity-drunk with a twenty-year-old. But people are multi-faceted. At least, other people are.

“You can stay here,” he tells her. He goes to pull a spare pillow and a blanket that doesn’t smell out of the closet. Clarke watches him with hazy eyes while he arranges both haphazardly on the lumpy couch.

“Where are you sleeping?”

He hasn’t figured that out yet; he’s got one tiny bedroom and one tiny bathroom and…well, you get the drift. He doesn’t have another bed. “Don’t worry about it,” he says. “Get some sleep, princess.” He turns to—oh, he doesn’t know. Sleep in the bathtub or something.

“Bellamy.” Clarke’s hand wraps around his wrist, very warm and soft. She steps close—she smells like tequila, but also like girl, like clean soap and lavender—and very slowly presses her mouth to the corner of Bellamy’s. “Thank you.” She gives a half smile, then laughs, drops back onto the couch. She is unconscious in a minute.

Bellamy stares at her, and there it is again: that protective urge curling up and making a home out of the cavity in his chest. _Bad omen_ , he thinks.

 

v. 

Bellamy Blake hates parties.

He is not social. He hates people. He doesn’t dance. It should be on the first page of _The_ _Handbook to Bellamy Blake._ The only thing that is remotely appealing about parties is the alcohol. He guesses that’s mostly why he showed up tonight.

He spends twenty minutes standing in the middle of a tipsy crowd before deciding to go upstairs purely for movement. It’s relatively empty, except for the couple glued at the mouth at the top of the stairs. What is this, high school? He pushes past them in irritation.

A hysterical laugh nabs his attention.

“Shit, Monty!” comes a familiar voice. He turns and—there she is, two hands hooked under the armpits of an unfamiliar but very drunk guy.

“Clarke?”

She drops the guy—Monty—who groans. “Bellamy?” They stare at each other before Clarke remembers what she was doing. She leans down to pick up Monty’s front half again. “Can you grab his feet? He drank way too much.” Definitely high school.

He grabs Monty’s feet. Clarke edges into a thankfully empty bedroom, where they deposit a snoring Monty. Clarke is breathing a little heavily. “This is our friend Jasper’s house,” she explains in a whisper as she ushers him towards the door. “He won’t mind.”

“Right,” says Bellamy dryly. He doesn’t know Jasper. He knows Jones, who’d passed him a flyer without remembering that Bellamy Blake hates parties. But he doesn’t say that. They both stop in the doorway, look back on the sleeping form.

“How is it that you’re everywhere I turn?” Clarke says.

“It’s a curse,” Bellamy says.

He looks at her then, realizes how close they’re standing to each other. She’s shorter than him—a ridiculous height, really. How is it that she still manages to look him straight in the eye, rather than up at him? How does she do that earnest thing with her eyes? How does she always smell like this? Clarke is made of questions and Bellamy’s short on answers.

“Bellamy,” she mutters. How does she say his name like that? She’s tilting her face up, rising on her toes, touching her mouth to his.

He feels a sudden urge to hold her, to find out if her hair is as soft as it looks and if her skin is as warm as it seems, but he ruins everything he touches and wouldn’t it be such a waste?

“I should go,” he blurts. He backs away from her, from the alarm bells ringing in his head, from the gravitational pull of her blue, blue eyes and her warm, warm body. His heart is thumping a slow, stuttering meter inside him. He really doesn’t get close to people for this reason exactly.

 

vi. 

Clarke has a boyfriend.

It’s really annoying. He’s not quite sure why. What does he care if the guy he’s been seeing hovering around her has douche hair and makes her giggle in a very un-Clarke way? He doesn’t care.

He sees them standing outside the hospital when O climbs into his car after her shift. Octavia’s bouncier now, shaking her hair out on purpose so it slaps his cheek and grinning at his scowl. “His name’s Finn,” she announces helpfully when she follows Bellamy’s gaze. “Cute, huh?”

Bellamy has no comment. He says as much, and O snorts. “Yeah,” she says. “Right.”

He doesn’t know what that’s supposed to mean.

Finn leans down to kiss Clarke and Bellamy thinks without meaning to, _He’s doing it wrong_. He surprises himself. He won’t touch that one.

 

“Where’s your cute little girlfriend?” 

He needs to be drunker to have this conversation—with _Raven_ , of all people. He tilts his empty beer and she cracks open a new one for him. “She’s not my girlfriend,” he tells her, not even trying to pretend not to know who she’s talking about. “She’s just…”

“A girl?” Raven says, with a quirk of her brows. “Yeah, I know the type.” Bellamy _really_ doesn’t know what that means, so he doesn’t say anything. He just shrugs. Raven leans over the bar, lowers her voice. “So, since she’s not your girlfriend,” she says, a glint in her dark eyes, “wanna get out of here?”

Somewhere in his memory is Raven telling him she has a fiancé, but he’s not seeing a ring on her finger, and she looks good in her tank top and jeans (like _really really good_ , like _even if this isn’t his third beer good_ ) and Clarke isn’t his girlfriend, so he grins back.

They make it to Bellamy’s car before they start tearing each other’s clothes off. It’s fucking cold, but Raven is all heat, sharp edges, snapping jaws. Bellamy will have bruises blooming on his collarbone and under his ear. Raven’s a good lay, maybe even a needed lay, and he knows there’s nothing left hanging because she drives herself home afterwards and she doesn’t ask him if he wants to come in. She doesn’t even kiss him goodbye, just pats his knee and says, “It’s a good thing, Bellamy.”

Why is everyone being so cryptic?

He knocks out in the back of the car and drives home crusty-eyed and bone-tired in the morning. He makes it to lunch with O—and of course Clarke is there, sunny and happy and frowning at Bellamy’s disheveled state. At one point she leans over to tug at the neck of his t-shirt, saying, “Is that a hickey?”

He jerks away from her. “Yeah,” he says, and so what if it comes out a little defensively?

But Clarke doesn’t look offended, just—odd. Curious? He doesn’t know. (He doesn’t know a lot these days.)

 

vii.

Octavia has a boyfriend, too.

Bellamy hates him. Lincoln’s too old, too big, too rough around the edges. He could probably kick anyone’s ass, even if he seems too laid-back to fight anyone. Even if his criminal record (and _yes_ , Bellamy looked it up) is like, one assault and two parking tickets and one gang affiliation that O is quick to dispute. He doesn’t talk much except to Octavia, who talks _a lot_ in his presence. Probably because she can sense that Bellamy hates him.

But Bellamy knows Octavia, and he knows that if he tries to say anything it will just cement her resolve. Besides, where does he get off criticizing her? He’s slept with four girls in the past three days and his knee is throbbing from the last time because he fucked it up on the sink in the Ark’s bathroom (it’s a lot harder than he initially thought).

“Give him a chance,” O says pleadingly. “He’s a really good guy.”

Bellamy doesn’t doubt it. Octavia’s smart, and even if he hated all of her past boyfriends there was never one that was an asshole at heart. “Yeah, whatever,” he replies.

“Yeah, whatever,” Octavia repeats mockingly. But she fixes him with a piercing stare, the kind that sees right through him, right through to his heart. “I’m worried about you, Bell,” she admits. She reaches up to fiddle with his collar, frowning. “What’s going on with you?”

Maybe she has a point. He hasn’t done laundry in a while (these jeans are so dirty they itch and he ran out of clean underwear days ago so he isn’t wearing any) and he isn’t sleeping much and he _thinks_ he ate a full meal on Thursday but doesn’t really remember. He clasps a hand around Octavia’s and says, “You don’t need to worry about me, O.”

He _really_ doesn’t need Clarke showing up at his messy apartment on a Sunday morning on a mission.

“I’m doing your laundry,” she declares as she shoves in the door. She takes one look at his place and adds, “And cleaning up.”

Bellamy hates her. She’s everywhere—at the Ark, at Octavia’s side, even in his fucking _dreams_ —and he wishes she would just go away. “What the hell,” he snaps. He tugs a t-shirt out of her hand. “Go away.”

“Octavia told me about the excessive sleeping,” she says, “and about the beer, and about the girls.” She says the last word with a note of disgust.

Something ugly rears its head in him. “About Raven?” 

That catches her off-guard. “You slept with Raven?” she asks. He doesn’t say anything, and she snaps back into Angry Clarke. “I’m allowed to worry about you, Bellamy,” she says.

“No, you aren’t.”

“I’m your friend.”

“No, you aren’t.”

She stares at him. She’s wearing jeans and a hoodie, one that’s too big for her. It’s probably Finn’s. That makes Bellamy feel even bitterer, for whatever reason. “I don’t care that you don't like me, Bellamy,” she says. “But you don’t get to be _mad._ ”

“What if it isn’t about you?” Which is ridiculous. Everything’s about her.

Her mouth works. “Do you have quarters?” she asks finally. “Because if you don’t I’ll pay for your stupid laundry with my own money.”

He gives her the quarters. He follows her to the Laundromat and watches her separate his clothes, button up his shirts, zip up his jeans, fold his graphic tees inside out, and haul them into washers and dryers. He follows her back to his apartment and watches her clean out the soda cans and pizza boxes, the gum wrappers and old food. He won’t let her touch his room. It would smell like her if he let her in there. But he doesn’t say that.

She pokes him in the chest. “Don’t do this again,” she tells him. And then she leaves.

Bellamy hates her.

 

viii.

Finn is Raven’s fiancé.

Bellamy finds this out from Octavia over the phone, who proceeds to describe in great detail the showdown that happened between Clarke and Finn, and how Octavia thinks Clarke should have clocked him and that Raven actually _did_ even though she and Finn are on-again off-again (off when Raven was with him, on when Finn was with Clarke, she guesses)—

“O,” interrupts Bellamy, who’s on a coffee run with his new partner, “I don’t need to know all this.”

Octavia huffs. “You’re hopeless,” she says. “Anyway, I’m visiting Clarke tonight if you—”

“I don’t want to come,” he says. His new partner—an older guy, a veteran cop called Kane, who’s meant to keep Bellamy in line—is waiting impatiently by the cruiser. “Get her a bottle of white wine, though. It’s her breakup alcohol.”

There’s silence. “How do you know that?”

Bellamy pauses. How does he know that? Clarke must have mentioned it to him at some time, some place. “Just do it,” he tells Octavia.

“Bell—”

“I have to go,” he says abruptly, and hangs up.

 

When he gets home, Raven is sitting on the steps of his apartment. He is so tired.

“What are you doing here?” he grumbles.

She stands up and he can tell she is so pissed. He hopes it’s not at him. He’s seen the wrath of Raven Reyes and it’s a lot of yelling and broken glass.

“If this is about Finn—” Bellamy starts.

“Shut up,” says Raven. Her eyes are daggers. “Are you alone tonight or what?”

Bellamy’s brain is a question mark. He wants to get out of his uniform and put on sweatpants and not deal with Raven Reyes. “Um,” he says. “Yes.”

“Good,” she snaps. “Now let me in, and take off your clothes.” Bellamy blinks at her, and she raises her chin. “I’m not going to stay, and you’re not going ask me,” she adds grudgingly. “And we’ll both move on.”

Bellamy opens his mouth, closes his mouth. There’s an emptiness that feels cold. “Move on from what?” he chooses to ask.

Raven gives him a dirty look. “From _who_ , you idiot.”

He sort of doesn’t care to think that he’ll regret this.

 

ix.

Bellamy was a smartass kid, so he knows what being beat up feels like.

(It feels like pain and a lot of anger, the sharp twist of fury in his gut that he’s had a hard time resisting for a long time.) 

Bellamy was also a scrappy kid, so he knows what beating someone else up feels like.

(It feels like power and a little glee (he never beat up someone who didn’t threaten him or Octavia, so) and also some guilt, because he doesn’t enjoy hurting people.)

Bellamy has never been shot, so he doesn’t know what that feels like. Until now.

( _That_ feels like a slow, dull, deep burn. Like he’s catching on fire and he’ll burn up from the inside out. Like he’s Octavia in that repetitive nightmare and he’ll be ash soon enough. Being shot feels like something caustic in your gut, in your heart, like being on the edge of sleep but unable to get there.)

One of the sadder things about him is that he’s stupid enough to taunt someone with a gun.

It’s like getting punched. One second he’s making a wisecrack about the guy’s intelligence, the next he’s down on the ground.

He’s faintly aware of Kane shouting, his face zooming in above Bellamy’s at an angle he can only call unflattering. He’s got his hands on Bellamy’s chest and the pain gets sharper. _O’s going to kill me_ , he thinks, and then his brain goes fuzzy.

The view above him keeps changing, like someone switching out a backdrop. Blue sky. Kane. The roof of an ambulance. The fluorescent lights of a hospital.

“Get O,” he keeps trying to say, but his mouth keeps filling up with something metallic and all that comes out is _O_. He tries to get up and several hands shove him back down, pin him there while they prepare to cut into him.

He blacks out.

 

Another thing about Bellamy Blake: he hates hospitals (this should be on the twentieth or so page of _The Handbook to Bellamy Blake_ ). They’re houses of sickness and death and he almost can’t believe Octavia went into med school, trained to be around death all the time, except she’s O and she wants to help people, and he guesses he should be glad that she didn’t want to be a cop, that she’s not on the table like he is.

He floats and he dreams, mostly about Octavia—how little she was when she was born, how she bit down on his finger before she even had teeth and how he felt that shift in gravity, that pull of something _more important than everything else_. How she didn’t want to let go of his hand _ever_ until she was seven and decided she didn’t need anyone else.

He also dreams about Clarke. He dreams of her in long dresses and crowns, in castles and on thrones. He dreams she looks him dead in the eye with her mouth pursed and says, “You idiot.”

 

He comes to groggily. Something is clamped onto his hand tightly. It’s Octavia, half-asleep in a chair next to his bed. He twitches his fingers. “O,” he mutters. 

She snaps awake. “Bellamy!” She turns and calls, “He’s awake!” Then she leans forward and kisses him—really hard—on the forehead. He can’t complain.

“Clarke,” he says. His tongue feels like lead. It sounds like _Clock._

Octavia stares at him. “What, Bell?”

He tries again, squeezing O’s hand. “Clock.”

He falls asleep again before the stomp of footsteps gets into the room.

 

He drifts in and out of consciousness. Octavia is the person by his bedside most often, chattering, holding his hand. Kane stands in the corner of his eye a few times, stern but relieved. Once it’s Raven standing at the foot of his bed, mouth curled in exasperation. Clarke floats in and out of his vision in a blurry blonde haze.

Something heavy is sitting on his stomach when he wakes up for good. Something _really_ heavy, and blonde. He reaches out with his free hand and touches it. _Soft_ , he thinks. _Soft like I_ _thought_.

Clarke stirs, and then she snaps awake, eyes wide and—you guessed it—really really blue. “Bellamy,” she says. “Bellamy, I love you. I’m sorry you had to get shot for me to—I love you.”

There’s a fuzzy haze around the edges of his vision and he’s not sure. “’s this real?” he mumbles. He reaches out to touch a finger to her temple, her cheek. “You real?”

A flicker of confusion passes over her face, but she grabs his hand and presses it to her cheek. “I’m real,” she tells him firmly. “I’m real and I love you.”

It’s like a weight lifts off of him, like someone has filled him with something warm. “Tha’s good,” he says. He’s so tired.

“Bellamy?”

His hand drops back onto the bed. “Love you,” he mutters, eyelids heavy. “Love you, love you, love you.”

He doesn’t dream this time.

 

x. 

On page 89 of _The Handbook to Bellamy Blake_ , it should say: _Bellamy Blake hates suits._ On page 90, it should say: _Bellamy Blake likes weddings._  

Usually the former is because he doesn’t own a good one and when he wears it people expect him to be more polite or whatever. Usually the latter is because he’s good-looking and bridesmaids find him especially charming when he has champagne in his hand. Not this time, though.

This time it’s because Clarke looks really, really good in blue.

“Damn it, Octavia, stop it,” Bellamy snaps as his sister reaches for his hair for the third time.

“You have a _cowlick,_ ” Octavia insists. “An honest-to-God _cowlick._ ” Bellamy grumbles, but lets her fix it.

“This isn’t even your wedding, Octavia,” Clarke says in amusement by the mirror. She comes over to inspect Octavia’s work, smooth a hand down his lapel. (Does she feel his heart beating? Does she realize she could reach into him and take it and he wouldn’t even care? Does she know he’d rather be at home with her? He doesn’t know the answers to any of those questions.)

“No,” huffs O, “it’s _Monty’s_ wedding, and if it’s not perfect he’ll run for the hills.”

Bellamy rolls his eyes. He doesn’t even like Monty. But he likes Clarke’s dress. He still hates O’s boyfriend, but at least he’s intimidating enough to keep the groomsmen from hitting on her.

 

A few things he doesn’t like about weddings: the food sucks, the ceremony’s too long, churches are uncomfortable, relatives are embarrassing. The last one most of all.

“Such a lovely couple,” Monty’s great aunt Helen coos. “Maybe you’ll be next, eh?”

Clarke chokes on champagne. Bellamy says, “We’ll see.” He steers Clarke as far away from that woman as possible.

“We’ll see?” Clarke repeats, and her mouth is tugging up at the corners.

“Calm down,” Bellamy says airily. He slings an arm comfortably around her shoulders and pulls her into his side. “I do not want to marry you.” He adds, “Besides, O’d tell you about anything I had planned weeks in advance.”

“Right,” Clarke says, voice uneven. “I don’t want to marry you, either.” They leave the last two words unsaid, hanging in the air. Bellamy imagines them as floating neon signs flashing at them: _Right Now._ They don’t feel like ominous warnings or bad omens or alarm bells. They just feel like a promise.

Jasper slams into them two minutes later and gets cake all over them. Clarke is pissed. Her mom gave her that dress. Bellamy doesn’t think their clothes are a huge loss. He even proves it in the bathroom.

(Page 91 should say _Bellamy Blake really likes weddings_.)

Bellamy’s not good with happy endings or last lines or sentiment. He doesn’t really get close to people. But he would think that the last page should say, in very small print, _Bellamy Blake loves Clarke Griffin._ Or something cheesy like that.

 


End file.
